DVLA bans offensive personalised plates

Whether you find them distasteful or worthy of a snigger while stuck in traffic, offensive number plates are no more.

The DVLA has banned personalised registration plates that spell out words like 'bum,' 'bonk' and 'drugs.'

The DVLA reviews applications for personalised registration plates twice a year and vets potential offense numbers before they are released in March and September.

Offending combinations withdrawn by the organisation include BB11 TCH and K11 LLA. The DVLA has also stopped plates with racist or extremist overtones, such as DA** RKY, MU11 AHS and Y11 DOS.

Currently numberplates that end in the common text message abbreviations OMG and WTF are still allowed, but the DVLA said that these too may soon be added to the banned list.

A spokesman for the DVLA said: "The vast majority of registration numbers are made available but we have a responsibility to ensure that the combinations used do not cause offence.

"We try to identify combinations that may cause offence and, having considered the appropriateness of these registration numbers, we have withdrawn them as they could cause offence or embarrassment on the grounds of political or racial sensitivities or are in poor taste."